Notes for you filled with what I've been noticing

Menu

My vintage movie queue

I don’t know if your parents had stock answers to any of the questions that came up a lot during your childhood, but my parents certainly did. When I was growing up, whenever one of the kids would ask about what movie we could watch, my dad’s answer was almost always, “I Was A Teenage Werewolf.”

My dad said (and still says) a lot of funny things, some that he picked up, others that he made up. I don’t think I gave it much thought, but if asked about this one, I probably would have put it in the “made-up” category.

Imagine my surprise when a good friend recently posted a picture she snapped during a research trip for an upcoming book project. From a pile of newspapers saved in the files of the Warren County Public Schools, now in the Library of Virginia in Richmond, a page from the Northern Virginia Daily, 11 July 1958:

Released in 1957, the year my dad and mom both graduated from high school, it made a boatload of money its first week. We know that at least the title had staying power. I actually don’t know if my dad ever saw it, or Invasion of the Saucer-Men.

I did find an entry on the movie at imdb.com. Before Michael Landon worked that boyish grin on Bonanza or Little House on the Prairie, he appears to have spent some time as a teenage werewolf.

Michael Landon, teenage werewolf

Fast-forward to 2015, and keep your eye out for I was a Teenage Wereskunk, now in pre-production. It’s billed as “a comedy homage to the drive-in monster movies of the 50s.”
Kids these days.